I’m the West Coast representative for Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum. I was a political columnist for SFGate.com (San Francisco Chronicle online) from 2004-2008. I've written for the Algemeiner, Daily Caller, Washington Examiner, Independent Journal Review, American Thinker, FrontPage Magazine, Jihad Watch, Family Security Matters, Accuracy In Media, Newsbusters, Israel National News, Jewish Press, J-The Jewish News Weekly of Northern California, and many others.

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

I have a new Campus Watch article up at Frontpage Magazine today on Cal State-University Sacramento professor Ayad Al-Qazzaz. His involvement with a controversial textbook currently being used in California's public middle schools is raising eyebrows. Read on:

Public school children in grades K-12 are being assigned textbooks that misrepresent and, in some cases, glorify Islamic beliefs and history – often at the expense of other religions and cultures. The apologetics and indoctrination common in university Middle East studies programs is being carried into public schools by contentious, ahistorical, and inaccurate textbooks written by those same Middle East studies professors.

History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond, a textbook published by the Teachers' Curriculum Institute, was removed from the Scottsdale, Arizona school district in 2005 for this very reason. The textbook is now causing controversy in California and at the center of the storm is Cal State University-Sacramento sociology professor Ayad Al-Qazzaz.

3 Comments:

As a 7th grade history teacher who teaches this subject, I totally agree with the complaints about the textbook over-glorifying Islam and whitewashing the religion's violent excesses. However, in my own blog post on this subject I did feel it necessary to correct one of the complaints about the textbook, which was that it shortchanges the other religions while focusing on Islam. The reason for that is because Christianity and Judaism are in the 6th grade textbook, while Islam is in the 7th grade textbook. This is because of the structure of the California state standards:

I find your view that jihad is more closely related to terrorism and war as opposed to a personal struggle or positive struggle as quite unenlightened.

The invocation of jihad as a justification for terrorism and war is a 20 century phenomenon, almost exclusively. Basing the meaning of jihad mostly on the motivations of 20th century terrorists ignores the history of Islam since 610 AD when Muhammad received God's revelations. Ignoring a century and a half of religious history when defining jihad is folly. There are 300 million people living in the MIddle East today, a vast majority of whom are Muslim. Among them, only fundamentalists like the Wahabists would consider jihad primarily as a motive and justification for terrorism. To the remaining Muslims in the world, Jihad is a personal struggle to be pious, fulfill the 5 pillars of Islam, and live virtuously.

I would be interested to know under what/whose auspices you studied Islam because your assessment is unrealistically politicized and outlandishly ignorant of social reality.

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I’m the West Coast representative for Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum. I was a political columnist for SFGate.com (San Francisco Chronicle online) from 2004-2008. I've written for the Algemeiner, Daily Caller, Washington Examiner, Independent Journal Review, American Thinker, FrontPage Magazine, Jihad Watch, Family Security Matters, Accuracy In Media, Newsbusters, Israel National News, Jewish Press, J-The Jewish News Weekly of Northern California, and many others.